The impact strength of conveyor belts is an important property needed to resist the forces of receiving conveyed material and also to cope with the very high forces produced when material is inadvertently wedged between the belt and a pulley. Ultimately these forces cause splices to fail and belting to be damaged resulting in equipment down time and costly repairs.
The impact strength of conveyor belting can be improved with the inclusion of a reinforcing fabic embedded in the rubber covers. This reinforcing material usually takes the form of a woven fabric produced in lengths sufficient to be continuous along the manufactured length of belt. Splices used to join lengths of conveyor belt can also be reinforced to improve their impact strength.
Problems with the splicing of conveyor belts, particularly with conveyor belts used to transport heavy materials such as tar sands, coal and the like, often arise in the handling and storage of splice covers into which reinforcing material has been installed. In the past, conveyor belts 5 feet or more in width may have splice covers exceeding 10 feet in length, a thickness of about 3/4" and can have a weight in the order of 350 pounds. One-piece covers of such size are difficult to manhandle, particularly when laying them out for the splice.
This invention overcomes these difficulties by providing a splice design and a splicing method using a roll of cover material of approximately 1 metre in width, which can be laid on the splice in several places and still provide an improved and consistent impact strength over the whole area of the splice.